Samuel sweet



- UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE.

SAMUEL SVEET, OF NEW YORK, N. Y.

SPARK-ARRESTER.

Specication of Letters Patent No. 10,172, dated October 25, 1853.

To all whom z'z may concern:

Be it known that I, SAMUEL SWEET, of the city, county, and State of NewYork, have invented certain new and useful Tmprovements inSpa1kArresters for Loco motives; and I do hereby declare that thefollowing is a full, clear, and eXact description of the same, referencebeing had to the accompanying drawings, forming part of thisspecification, in which- Figure l is a plan or top view of the sparkarrester. Fig. 2 is a vertical central section of the same. Y

Similar letters of i'eference .in each of the several figures indicatecorrespo-nding parts.

This invention relates to certain new and useful improvements inlocomotive spark arresters, whereby the possibility of the sparksescaping can be avoided and the inconvenience of not having a suflicientescape surface for the draft through the meshes of the wire cloth topdone away and the meshes of the gauze kept perfectly open and clean andan eXtra draft obtained in case of an emergency; and it consists inplacing in a peculiar manner a deflector of novel construction or shapewithin and near the top of the outer case and directly over the top ofthe smoke pipe, so as to deflectthe sparks as they rise and give them adirection downward into the chamber fo-rmed between the outer slopingcase and the smoke pipe and in combination with the said deflectoremploying a metallic top plate or cover which has a series of invertedhollow conical wire cloth sieves or curved segments of a hollow sphere,set in and around it, and their lower tapering ends extending down somedistance into the hood or outer chamber, the said funnel shape seivesrendering the escape surface for draft very large and admitting of saiddeflector being employed,

without the necessity of increasing the size of said hood, for itwill'be evident that each one presents almost as much draft surface asthe entire top of the ordinary spark arresters and at the same timetheir shape and arrangement serve to aid in deflecting the sparks, foras they come against the surface of the funnel seives they are causedinstantly to glide or slide up and strike the solid portion of metal topand as there is not draft to operate upon them they have a downwarddirection given to them and they fall upon an inclined partition, whichguides them into the spark chamber. Thus it will be seen that thesesieves not only present more draft surface but that their shapepreserves them from being burned or injured by heat and from beingclogged, and further that their meshes can be more easily kept clean andfree from obstruction, for the steam in passing out acts with force o-nthe entire surface of each sieve, owing to its tapering shape, and opensthe meshes of the same, and consequently there is not much liability ofthe draft being stopped, and if it should be the said arrangement ofsieves and deflector admits of a sunken valve, composed of wire gauze,being employed to supply an eXtra draft in case of such an emergency,the said valve being arranged directly over the top of the detiector andclosing a large draft passage in the center of the top plate and at thebottom of a short wire gauze tube or pipe secured on the under surfaceof the top plate and surrounding the said large central opening. Thisvalve rises and falls on a rod like an ordinary pump valve as it isopened and closed 'by the engineer. By 'making the valve and its seat ofperforated metal or of wire gauze I also obtain a large amount of draftsurface without increasing the size of the outer case.

To enable others skilled in the art to make and use my invention I willproceed to describe its construction and operation.

A is thesmoke pipe, surrounded by a second pipe B, sloping outward fromit and having a wide or trumpet shape mouth or hood extending somewhatabove that of the smoke pipe, up into which the sparks rise and aredeflected again downward and caused to fall on the incline-d partitionC, and pass from off it by their gravity into the receptacle D, formedby the junction of the pipes A and B, from which they can be removedthrough sliding doors when desired.

E, is the deflector placed over the smoke pipe, and is strengthened bybraces J J', which are secured to the inside o-f the outer case, as seenin F ig. 1. This deflector E, meets the sparks as they come up throughthe smoke pipe and gives them a downward direction, and they then bytheir gravity and owing to no draft acting upon them fall upon thepartition C, and pass into the receptacle provided for them, the smjokeand steam passing upward through the top of the hood and are notoperated upon by the current which catches the sparks.

G is the metallic top plate, and H, H, are right reticulated invertedfrustums of cones formed by covering skeleton frames consisting of theflanged rim a, ribs o and ring c with wire gauze, and set in a circle insaid plate and secured by screws passing through the flanges of the toprim and the plate Gr, and their body or tapering portion extending downsome considerable distance into the trumpet portions of the outer case,and partly surround the deflector, as seen in Fig. 2. These funnel shapesieves serve to give a very large amount of dra-ft surface and also ifany sparks should rise above the dei-lector and come in contact withtheir surface to cause them to pass freely up along their surface untilthey come in contact with the top plate G, whence they fall, as beforestated. The difference between the action of the draft upon atlat orconcave wire surface, in detaining the sparks, and the action upon sucha surface as I have described will be apparent, as the tendency of thedraft in the formed case is to cause them to adhere to, and the latterto slide upon the` surface. A like benefit is derived from having thesieves of such shape for as the steam rises and strikes with force thesurface of the sieves it strips the entire surface of Yd'irt and freesit from all obstruct-ion to draft.

I, is the central valve opening in the top plate and J, is the gauzeseat for the wire gauze valve K, to play against. It is of the form of acylinder and is secured to the under surface of the top plate and aroundthe valve opening, and extends some distance down into the outer case,the valve playing against its bottom and sliding upon the rod a, securedin the center of the braces of the valve seat, as seen in Fig. 2. Thevalve K, is attached to the lever L, which turns on .a fulcrurn o, andhas a rod M, for raising and lowering the valve over t-he rod a when itis desired to have an extra draft or to lessen the supply, the rod Mbeing placed so as to be in reach of the engineer. This arrangementpresents manifold advantages over anything heretofore known, for iteifectually prevents `'the escape of sparks and ashes, an evil which hasnot here tofore been entirely remedied. It also presents sufficientdraft surface to prevent any emergencies, which cannot be the case whena single wire gauze top is employed owing to the small amount of opensurface and further an extra and powerful draft can always be obtainedwhen necessary.

Having thus described my improvement in spark arresters, I desire it tobe understood that I make no claim to originality of invention in theindividual parts of the spark arrester separately considered; but

l/Vhat l do claim as new and of my invention is- The combination of thereticulated inverted frustums of cones H constructed and situated asdescribed with the trumpet shaped deflector and guard E, the reticulatedcylinder J under the opening I provided witli the reticulated valve K,when these parts are arranged in the upper portion of an enlarged orexpanded external pipe such as that represented at B in Figs. l

and 2 of the drawing, the whole operating in the manner and for thepurpose set forth in the foregoing specification. v

SAMUEL SWEET. Witnesses:

R. W. FENWICK, S. H. VALES.

